Climate change, true or rubbish? Earth's History has always had periods of hot and cold weather,simple as that

Question

My thoughts are its NOT man made and climate change would happen anyway. One way or another (hotter or colder) and will continue to be this way

Answer 1

Climate Change  - True

Yes, of course climate has always fluctuated natuarally over the past, however that is due to natural causes, over periods of 1000's of years.

However with the recent (in earth time) industrialisation has sped the process up exponetially. CO2 is a very poor greenhouse gas in comparison to some, like CH4 (Methane) which is hundreds of times worse, just considerably less is released.

Not only the release of these gases is a problem but the removal of the prcoesses which get rid of it (deforestation) is also unevening the balance.

It is inevitable that Climate Change occurs naturally, however not at the current rate that it is doing. Climate Change is certainly an issue not to be taken lightly and the recent issues with it are almost completely anthropogenic.

Answer 2

The climate always changes - there is no such thing as a static climate.

If the Earth isn't cooling, it's warming, and

if the Earth isn't warming, it's cooling.

Man has only increased co2 a scant 0.01% over the last 100 years.  This is far too small to cause any change in the climate.

Many scientist are now saying that the data shows that changes in the Sun's output is the major source for change in the Earth's climate.

Answer 3

The Earth's climate is always changing and it changed even before Man was around.  There is no denial on my part of the fact that the climate is getting warmer, just as it has since the coldest decades of the medieval Little Ice Age.  We are in the process of warming up from a few centuries of cold so extreme that the Baltic Sea froze over in winter, grapes could not grow north of the Alps [which is why beer became popular].

During the centuries just before the Little Ice Age, Greenland was so warm that the Vikings colonised it and built farms, growing wheat.  It was warmer then than now and without industry.  Note: you still can't grow wheat in Greenland because it is too cold.  The sea levels were higher then, but it was not a disaster.  In fact during that warmer period North Africa grew most of the grain for the Roman Empire.  When the climate cooled it got dry there and produced less grain, end of Roman Empire.

In researching the climate of the past, warm periods had more rain so deserts were less arid and smaller.  The northern areas changed from frozen tundra to forest and more plant and animals could live farther north. The "True Believers" in GW arbitrarily picked a period of recent time as being a "normal" climate.  If you average the last 10,500 years, the period after the last big Ice Age, then "normal" would be warmer than now.

Per Dr Jello - "Man has only increased co2 a scant 0.01% over the last 100 years."  That is so little that it is insignificant. CO2 is NOT the problem.  People emit about 2.5 lbs of CO2 per day just by breathing.  The panic is so bad that the hysterics are saying you should wash your T-shirts in cold water to save 10 lbs of CO2 production over the life of the shirt.  That's the same as breathing for 3 days. The hysterics are dead-set on controlling CO2 emissions, which includes breathing. When will they pass a breathing tax and if someone can't pay the tax they will have to stop them from breathing to "Save the World".

Since we emit CO2 and plants take in CO2 to make oxygen for us to breathe and make more CO2 [a natural recycling] and since CO2 is not toxic then it cannot be considered pollution.  There are plenty of really toxic gases and particulates that are pollution and those are the ones we need to clean up.

Using alternative energy is fine as long as it doesn't raise the cost of energy and lower our standard of living.  "Green" electricity usually costs more.  We need to work on the other side, reduce consumption through increased efficiency.  

Bob - The hottest day of summer is not on the longest day and the coldest day of winter is not the shortest day.  What we feel now in climate may be a result of solar activity decades ago.  There actually are more scientists who question the idea of GW caused by Man than those who support GW.  The reason for those groups who are supported by the various governments to follow the GW line is simply because the Leftist politicians have pushed the idea of GW to increase their power, control and get more taxes to buy votes.

mosmosmos - I agree about trees, but even though there are more now than when wood was the major fuel, there is also more for them to clean out of the air.  Tree farming and good forest management to prevent forest fires would help a lot.  My particular gripe is the developer who buys a few acres to cram some houses on and cuts down every tree in sight.  Must be that construction men can only walk in straight lines and if the trees were left they would keep running into them.

Dana 1981 - if you are right, then we are preventing a worse situation, another Ice Age, and we should continue to cause warming to make the Earth have a better climate.  London under a mile of ice would be a disaster, while London behind high dikes would not.  I still don't buy GW, especially because of the Leftists who ram it down our throats.  And repeating the same arguments [or lies] over and over until someone believes them is a old Leftist trick and your comments sound like I've read them several times before.

A warmer climate would have some good points.  More rain on the deserts and dry lands would provide more food.  As the climate/growing zones move north large areas will be opened for farming.  Greenland will have farms growing wheat again.  The southeast coasts of Ireland and England may be warm enough to grow oranges amd bananas.  True there would be some gradual coastal flooding and people would have to gradually move inland.  A few low-lying island nations might disappear, their people resettling around the world or perhaps in Greenland.

Change is just change, nothing is totally static, and it is neither good nor bad in itself.  Change takes and gives, it may be unpleasant for some while being pleasant for others.  Of course it is best to maximize the pleasant aspects where people are concerned.  A colder climate would be very unpleasant.

Answer 4

Global warming is caused by mobile phones.

Every time we answer, or make a call a microwave signal is beamed up to a satellite and back to earth.

Microwaves are extremely dangerous if not blocked.

Microwave signals by the million are circling the world every second of the day and cooking everything below them.

We are all living inside a global microwave cooker.

Answer 5

Keeping  on about this climate change business, which is an excuse (increases parices for plastic bags etc..) the next thing cows will be banned. Aren't they supposed to be giving off gases methane!! when they do you know what!

I enjoy my T. Bone so hopefully they won't put up the prices.

Right now its Global Fereezing !!

Answer 6

Your question is a little odd - it first dismisses it as rubbish and accepts it as a natural inevitability.

What you really mean to ask is are the causes natural or is man affecting nature.

The answer is both. We can do nothing about natural cycles of climate change. But we can affect man's undoubted contribution, and it matters little if you think man if having any effect or not. Would it do the world any harm to generate electricity by methods which don't produce noxious gases? Not at all, the air would be much cleaner. Wind, solar, hydroelectric and nuclear are the future.

Answer 7

I fail to see how human produced carbon dioxide can have such a  powerful effect, considering volcanic eruptions can pump out as much of the stuff in a week as mankind does in a year.  

I wouldn't say it is bad science, I'm just concerned about how many 'holier-than-thou' people have jumped on the bandwagon.

Answer 8

It is real and you are in denial about it.

Answer 9

We have Global Cooling right now. read on here http://www.dailytech.com/Temperature+Mon...

Answer 10

It's true that climate changes have always occurred but it is difficult to believe that human being activity is not making a difference.

Answer 11

yes it has, but climate change is real its just the causes that people are arguing about

Answer 12

Of course global warming is true. There's scientific evidence to back that theory up. The world is rising 3 degrees every decade. It's because of all the CO2 not allowing the heat rays from the sun to escape. The CO2 levels were decreasing before humans came along. Since we have, levels have rocketed. As we take down forests, less can be taken in. As we use our cars and planes, more is produced. As we burn fossil fuels, levels rise. As our population grows, we produce more CO2. So I'm sorry but I don't agree with you at all. I believe we caused it, but also that we can stop it.

Answer 13

Since 1998 we have had a decade of colder weather, while CO2 continues to increase. This indicates to me that the role of CO2 has been exaggerated.

None of the computer models predicted this cooling period simply because they overestimate the role of CO2 in a highly complex and interactive system.

The statement that weather is not the same as climate, while superficially true is at best misleading, because our understanding of climate is based on our understanding of how the weather works, so if we can't get our predictions for a few weeks ahead right, our predictions for 20 or 30 or 50 years ahead are bound to be even less reliable.

Edited to add comment

An important point that I have never seen in the media is that the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is the critical rate limiting factor in photosynthesis, so increase CO2 and you increase photosynthesis.

In my student days, I worked as as a greenhouse technician and we used to add CO2 to the atmosphere because it made the plants grow faster and stronger.

Answer 14

1. climate change - true.

2. earth history shows climate highs and lows - true.

3. current climate change is manmade - only time will tell and it's way too early to say yes with 100% certainty.

Answer 15

Climate change HAS happened before. Many times. Over geological history global climates have swung one way, and then the other. I have in my lifetime noticed a change in the weather and admit that things are changing. I also admit that man most likely has had a lot to with it, but . . . and this is the BIG one that most people seem to have a problem with . . . it is going to happen whether we like it or not. You can not stop time, just as you can not stop the tide coming in - time and tide wait for no man. Nor does climate change. It is a natural phenomenon that has unfortunately been speeded up by man. If we were to cease all polution TODAY, if we ceased all CO2 production TODAY, if we ceased driving our cars TODAY, climate change will still continue, albeit at a slower rate, but the crucial thing is, it will continue. Today, here in the UK we live in a cool climate, yet in geological history these islands have been covered in times by ice and in tropical vegetation, swamps, and coral reefs. Simply look at the fossil records for yourself if you do not believe it! There are fossils of sea creatures high in rocks of some mountains. Ok some change in levels has been due to plate tectonics, but sea levels have changed too over geological time. Locally I can go and see ancient tree trunks still in place where they were growing, now in the sand and mud low down on the sea shore. These submerged forests date to well before man ever thought of the wheel.

But man IS destroying the planet. We do need to stop what we are doing to it. But we are not the cause of climate change.

Man is a parasite on this beautiful planet, and "life" will find a way to heal the scars that man is inflicting upon it. We have and will eradicate species through our actions, but when mans time has come and the slate is wiped clean, just like the dinosaurs, existing and new species will evolve, and the planet will continue to go through its cycles of cold and warm, high and low levels of CO2 and oxygen - until our sun finally burns out billions of years from now and planet planet dies too.

Until then, we are the guardians of this beautiful planet. Drive your cars less, recycle more - and get outside and enjoy the miracle that is this earth. I am off for a walk.

Answer 16

Isn't it either a rant or spam to keep a word document with a speech in it and then post that multiple times as an answer?

I think I've seen the above answer about 12 times.

Answer 17

Climate change is real, and mostly caused by us.  The fact that previous changes were natural doesn't mean this one is.

Previous changes were caused by changes in solar radiation.  We measure the Sun extensively, and that's not happening now.

"Recent oppositely directed trends in solar

climate forcings and the global mean surface

air temperature", Lockwood and Frolich (2007), Proc. R. Soc. A

doi:10.1098/rspa.2007.1880

http://www.pubs.royalsoc.ac.uk/media/pro...

News article at:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6290228.st...

Answer 18

Manmade climate change is a myth.

Answer 19

There are many basic scientific facts which can only be explained if the current global warming is being caused by an increased greenhouse effect due to carbon dioxide accumulating in the atmosphere from humans burning fossil fuels.

For example, the planet is warming as much or more during the night than day.  If the warming were due to the Sun, the planet should warm a lot more during the day when the Sun has influence.  Greenhouse gases trap heat all the time, so they warm the planet regardless of time of day.  Another example is that the upper atmosphere is cooling because the greenhouse gases trap the heat in the lower atmosphere.  If warming were due to the Sun, it would be warming all layers of the atmosphere.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;...

We know it's warming, and we've measured how much:

http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/science...

Scientists have a good idea how the Sun and the Earth's natural cycles and volcanoes and all those natural effects change the global climate, so they've gone back and checked to see if they could be responsible for the current global warming.  What they found is:

Over the past 30 years, all solar effects on the global climate have been in the direction of (slight) cooling, not warming.  This is during a very rapid period of global warming.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/62902...

http://www.pubs.royalsoc.ac.uk/media/pro...

A recent study concluded:

“the range of  [Northern Hemisphere]-temperature reconstructions and natural forcing histories…constrain the natural contribution to 20th century warming to be <0.2°C [less than one-third of the total warming].  Anthropogenic forcing must account for the difference between a small natural temperature signal and the observed warming in the late 20th century.”

http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/104...

You can see this in the third graph here, where the dotted lines are just from natural causes, and the full lines are natural + human causes:

http://www.pnas.org/content/vol104/issue...

If that’s not enough to convince you the Sun isn’t responsible, consider the fact that no scientific study has ever attributed more than one-third of the warming over the past 30 years to the Sun, and most attribute just 0-10% to the Sun.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;...

So the Sun certainly isn't a large factor in the current warming.  They've also looked at natural cycles, and found that we should be in the middle of a cooling period right now.

"An often-cited 1980 study by Imbrie and Imbrie determined that 'Ignoring anthropogenic and other possible sources of variation acting at frequencies higher than one cycle per 19,000 years, this model predicts that the long-term cooling trend which began some 6,000 years ago will continue for the next 23,000 years.'"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitc...

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/ab...

So it's definitely not the Earth's natural cycles.  They looked at volcanoes, and found that

a) volcanoes cause more global cooling than warming, because the particles they emit block sunlight

b) humans emit over 150 times more CO2 than volcanoes annually

http://volcano.und.edu/vwdocs/Gases/man....

So it's certainly not due to volcanoes.  Then they looked at human greenhouse gas emissions.  We know how much atmospheric CO2 concentrations have increased over the past 50 years:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Mauna...

And we know from isotope ratios that this increase is due entirely to human emissions from burning fossil fuels.  We know how much of a greenhouse effect these gases like carbon dioxide have, and the increase we've seen is enough to have caused almost all of the warming we've seen over the past 30 years (about 80-90%).  You can see a model of the various factors over the past century here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Clima...

This is enough evidence to convince almost all climate scientists that humans are the primary cause of the current global warming.

Answer 20

Climate change is a natural part of the environment (true), of which man has no influence (not affected by our rubbish).

Answer 21

It is not man made. For those who think it was, riddle me this:

What was the temperature June 15, 1842?  Too hard. How about the temperature December 21, 1650?

Oh that is correct, we have only been tracking the weather for a little over 100 years. Hmm, I can conclude that you will conclude that we are pretty smart. However, theories will always remain theories (conjecture) until they are proven. Don't bother citing any sites, the last one did not prove anything. Use your own brain to figure it out. Just because a scientist says it does not mean it is true. Much like a doctor today is only PRACTICING medicine. Are you beginning to understand yet?

Answer 22

to put it simply the world is screwed whether it be now or next 2000 years. Everything has an end

Answer 23

Yes, it has always had periods of hot and cold; however, at no point in history has the warming cycle increased so rapidly. This is verifiable from climate records found in ice cores taken from the Greenland and Antarctic ice caps.

There are still those who say that man cannot affect a warming global average temperature in the same way as there are still those who believe it's not warming at all; ie, they're wrong.

Six and a half billion people. Industry to support six and a half billion people. What on earth makes anyone think that all that won't affect the global temperature?

If you live by the sea, and you notice that the high tide mark is gradually getting higher year on year, that's global warming in action right there. And it has been made worse by those industrialists worldwide who have buried their heads in the sand and ignored it.

Answer 24

I'm in agreement with Pin-head.

Of course Earth has had periods of hot and cold climates and it has become obvious that the world's climate is changing yet again. The argument is more "Can we actually do anything to reverse/stop it and is the reason for this change human or nature based."

As much as my opinion is split on that, I am not qualified enough or have all the data in order to decide one way or the other.

Answer 25

Dr Jello is apparently a "Top Contributor", but his pathetic denying appears everywhere. In 1958 it was 310ppm, now its more than 380, is that 0.1%?

This is not a question, but a poorly disguised attemt to voice a republican agenda of anti-science.